A Visitor

My friend Sarah traveled across the planet to visit me. I am lucky. Sarah and I met in volleyball training two weeks before high school started in 1989. I remember thinking that Sarah was kind, worldly, and a bit reckless at 14. Now 16 and ½ years she laughs when I share my first impression and says she remembers me best as a quiet girl with long legs, arms, and fingers.

Sarah is now a social worker; she has worked with children in Appalachia as well as in impoverished sections of Detroit and Austin. She intimately knows parts of the developing world that lie within the US borders. And, has an unfortunately large collection heartbreaking horror stories that never made it to the news, because when “those things happen to those people in those neighborhoods, they are not newsworthy.” Sarah is someone who lives with her heart wide open and someone who sometimes forgets to protect it. Sarah is also someone who enriches the world by living and growing within it.

I have so many amazing people in my life who are supportive and loving and inspiring, I’m certain I could write a book just on you.

There is something special about spending time with someone who has known you so long. Simply by being present she connected pieces of my life, bringing love and reflection from home and carrying it back to friends and family. It also gave me an opportunity to view my life here through a new lens. I have asked her to write something that I will post.

The first morning Sarah was here she volunteered in the nursery at Bottom, which amounted to cleaning the bins and holding babies. In the afternoon we went to visit Doreen and Dalitso, and after hearing they had no food on Christmas she left me money to buy them a couple chickens. The next day we headed to Zomba, a mountain town, three hours South of Lilongwe, where Clement’s father lives. Compared to Lilongwe Zomba is incredibly green and lush but locals still lament the rapid rate of deforestation. From Zomba we traveled to Cape McClear, one of the beautiful destinations points on the lake, where we met Dana and McPharlen and celebrated New Year’s Eve and their two-year anniversary. And then, as though it were all in the span of a single breath, I watched her plane take off towards South Africa. It was a short but wonderful week.

Just so you know, my door is open for anyone else who wants to come.